Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Nick Gernert, CEO of WordPress VIP, talks AI, SEO, and Owning Your Digital Space

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

In this episode of "Right About Now," host Ryan Alford and guest Nick Gernert, CEO of WordPress VIP, discuss the evolution of WordPress from a blogging platform to a dominant content management system (CMS). Gernert shares his journey from digital agencies to leading WordPress VIP, emphasizing the platform's importance in the corporate landscape. The conversation explores the challenges of convincing large organizations to adopt WordPress and the role of AI in enhancing content creation. Gernert advocates for a human-centric approach to AI integration, ensuring technology empowers rather than replaces content creators. The episode underscores WordPress's commitment to simplifying digital content management.TAKEAWAYSEvolution of WordPress from a blogging platform to a leading content management system (CMS).Market dominance of WordPress, with 43% of the top 10 million websites using its technology.Challenges faced by corporate clients in adopting WordPress as a primary business tool.Corporate skepticism regarding the use of WordPress for complex applications.Importance of security, compliance, and reliability in legitimizing WordPress for larger organizations.The role of people in digital transformation and the need for broader access to digital tools.Comparison of simplicity versus complexity in CMS platforms and the advantages of WordPress's user-friendly nature.Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in content management and its potential to enhance human creativity.Current state of AI adoption among WordPress users and the goal of seamless AI integration.Future outlook for WordPress, emphasizing the importance of adapting to technological advancements and user needs. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

43% of the top 10 million websites are powered by WordPress technology. You know, and the next closest are in the single digits. So it's not even close in terms of market share. This is Right About Now with Ryan Ulford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about now. We're always getting right here today. Kind of, you know, sometimes, Nick, we have people on and they're doing some amazing things and they're doing things with brands that you've never heard of,

technologies you've never heard of. But there's a word that I think I would guess 97% of our audience probably knowing why we know our audience pretty well they know it it's WordPress he's the CEO of WordPress VIP Nick Gernard what's up Nick? Hey well hello how are you? Great man thanks for joining. Yeah man you say the word WordPress yeah you know it's like people know what WordPress is. They know websites.

You don't have to, especially if you're talking to marketing people who are digital or just somewhat in the landscape. I think we've heard of WordPress. So carrying the brand for 11 plus years, good job. Thanks, I don't joining us I'm excited to talk all things WordPress and you Let's set the table for our audience. Let's give them a little bit of who Nick is, both beyond WordPress and maybe otherwise,

a little bit of your background. Oh man, all right, how much time we got? Thank you, thank you. So yeah, so it's great to be here. Thank you, Ryan. It's always fun to talk, big fan of yours and what you've done over the years as well. So congrats on this.

Yeah, so as you mentioned, I'm the CEO of WordPress VIP, which is a business that's within a much broader ecosystem that is the WordPress ecosystem, that kind of what you know that I'm very happy if 90 plus percent of your audience has immediate recognition of WordPress. My background prior to the 11 years you just gave me credit for in this was all digital agency, comms, et cetera, on the practitioner side. So pretty much for my entire career leading up to

this moment, I was working in digital agency at some level of it as a starting as a con as a freelancer All the way up into working into an one of Omni comms brands there and so have a really a deep love of the application of technology in general, but also I'm a product of Kind of growing up in the 90s when the web was in its infancy and it was something that I got access to really at some pivotal moments in my life and have been fortunate to build a career around helping folks navigate the web. So a lot of my work on the agency side leading up to bringing me into VIP just happened to

be with really large brands sort of as I was kind of in the final years of my agency side. And there's this really interesting dynamic that some really large brands that were more daring in how they were trying to engage with their customers. So think of this as like a time when social media marketing and things like this were still really trying to, brands were trying to wrap their head around it. And so we were working with really ambitious brands on how they could engage with their customers

in a new and exciting way. And there was a lot of WordPress that we ended up recommending that customers use. And so WordPress, this big open source community movement, I'm part of a company that was started by the creator of WordPress, a guy named Matt, this company, automatic, that I'm part of as WordPress VIP, was started to really help support the broader open source ecosystem. But, you know, 11 or

so years ago, automatic didn't really have this business that was focused on some of the largest customers that can really serve some of the, you know, the biggest use cases, biggest brands, large thorny public sector rollouts and things like this that you might do. And yet that was already happening. We were doing that as part of my work when I was at OmniComm and things like this. So 11 or so years ago, I had some discussions with Matt, others at Automattic and said, there's a whole market out here

that WordPress already exists in some capacity. It could just be a lot bigger. We should really try to build, if you wanted to build a business around that. And I think the response at the time was like, yeah, that sounds interesting. Maybe we should build, you know, let's, if we can try to explore something like that. And so joined automatic on a pretty loose charter to try to look at like, how could you take something like WordPress that was known for blogging and personal websites and

a million other things across the web and say, no, as maybe some of the biggest brands in the world, you could, you could trust this as well. So that started 11 years ago and they've kept me around at least this long. So I feel like we're doing some things right, having a lot of fun. So, and now I get to chat with you. So that gets us over simplified view to today.

Yeah. And you know, Nick, I think, I do think our audience knows the name WordPress. And I think it's interesting as you think about the history of websites and you think about, I don't know why I've been in digital. You know, I'm a traditional digital guy.

Like, you know, they call us something like, I'm not a native digital, I'm probably native analog, but now a lot of my adult career in digital, on both sides of it. But definitely always been on the forefront of digital innovation and technology because even the clients that I had working at big agencies were all in that space and technology, what we were selling with technology and watching the evolution of WordPress and from the blogging platform to really the go to CMS for most definitely mid-market agencies and clients to all the way up to like what you're talking about corporate level as the sort of transition and evolution from that I don't know I think of almost like MySpace you know back like as the as the as the the evolution though

is like if MySpace had made it into the booming company that WordPress did like because they evolved the right way or something. WordPress went from the blogger to the small, you know, everyday person to what became is still for even us as an agency, our go-to kind of CMS for clients that need functionality, but something that's workable for a mid-level market, you know, client. It's been fascinating to sort of watch that evolution of the company, you know, and I'm sure you've been had a seat right at the table. Yeah, yeah, a seat right at the table. And I mean, WordPress started in 2003.

So just think about like what devices were we using in 2003? A really crappy PC or a shiny Mac. You know, these are cool. Something like that, yeah, like an Aqua Mac. But I don't know if that was that age on the iMac or what. Those first iMacs came out like 2005ish maybe, I think. My movie.

Yeah, 2004. The ones that were cool that swiveled like the, you know. Yeah, to make me feel old, but you know, to think about where we were there and then where we are today and WordPress has been this, it's been along through that and continue to grow. Market share still like inches up. It's harder. Like once you reach certain scale, like, I mean, that number, that's a big number.

You keep moving up. But what? No, let's go ahead and tell it, Dick. That's a good one. What? What? Like 43% of the web. What is it? What percent?

43% of the top 10 million websites are powered by WordPress technologies. You know, and the next closest are in the single digits. So it's like, it's not even close in terms of market share. We call that a category king. That's what that is. We call that the category king. That is the agency guy. So, yeah, workshop.

So, category king WordPress. It is obvious CMS is and it's known for that. And so you guys have worked hard for that. It's what's that? Talk about working for a company that has you know that market share and then bringing to life sort of even a new, not new category, but it is a new category for y'all. Like you know dominant CMS overall, but again,

bringing to life the brand for corporate to kind of go direct to. Because that transition is kind of what I was kind of building to all this, the MySpace and all that is you're at this level and everybody respects you, you're agreeing that, but then trying to be the corporate, you know, king, so to speak, your go-to. I mean, was that a hard transition to get people to make mentally? Yes, so, you know, the corporate kings and queens, we're like this transition for us, I mean, that was the opportunity as coming into the business,

because as ubiquitous as WordPress is on web, it's not in that corporate sense. It was, there was niche adoption of WordPress from a like, oh, we use it for the corporate blog. Like one of these examples was like Boeing, I had like Randy's blog. This was like a pilot named Randy. He was blogging, he leveraged WordPress,

but it was in no way like the corporate homepage or anything like, you know, that was core to business operations it was like yeah that's fine as a side project and really the whole vision was like how would you legitimize this thing so it's not just playing a second or tertiary role in the enterprise it's playing like a primary business aligned role at the center and and so a big challenge for us is like, how do you take something that is as ubiquitous as WordPress, but also ubiquitously known for its blogging

and maybe more consumer and small business and up to mid-market. But then there's a mental model that says like, it's good to a point, but not for this point sort of thing. And so a lot of where we end up focusing in that transition and where we focused as a business was like, I'll talk about it like food, shelter, water of like the hierarchy of needs of enterprises

is like at that base, you have to be able to speak authoritatively around security, compliance, reliability, et cetera. Like last night, I think was a big night for a lot of web traffic here. And that's, I know that folks will view this, but we're chatting here today. After last night was election night here in America,

there's a lot of organizations that rely on our platform through a night like that. It's like, how do we reassure them that we are ready to go from traffic and everything else that's going to come in sort of that critical moment that you don't get back? It's like that moment goes past, you can't rewind the tape and then, all right, we fixed it.

Let's try it again. It's gone. So we had to invest heavily in just that foundation there. And then there's everything you know about like working with large organizations, that's the intangibles of like, how do you show up as an account team? How do you show up as like understanding their business needs, their objectives, their, like, how do you then meet them there so that whatever software we're providing, and as much as I want to have, say, software is

the is the solution to everything, really, I think 70% of its people. And that's actually one of the strengths of WordPress is that it's so it's so centered around people and creating access for people that the 30% actually that technology impacts in the organization, we do really well. But how do we really bring people together? Because so much of actual success and digital and everything else is like, can you access the tools?

Can you access your audience? Can you access your customers, et cetera? And so much of the existing market from my perspective, prevents that, actually doesn't enable that. So we're like, how can we open that up? How do we focus on opening that up? So that our transition is really like, how do you take something that the web at large has

accepted and said, this thing's great, fit for purpose, but enterprises have a bit of skepticism around that. We've been spending 11 years and we'll continue to spend many, many, many more years trying to really help serve that market and adapt as, who knows what happens in the next 20 years of WordPress' story. Yeah, and it's interesting, I can say this,

being on the agency side and I've worked to some of the largest agencies in the world and now own my own boutique shop. Sometimes we try to make things complicated. Like it seems like some of these platforms and CMSs that I think are starting to wind down, I hope they are. God, they're so complex. And so like, I feel like, I don't know this,

but I've always been skeptical. Like they're complex for complex sake. You this, but I've always been skeptical. Like they they're complex for complex sake. You know, that's like always been what I loved about WordPress is, yeah, you got to learn it and get your way around it. But it's meant to be easy, but robust. You know, like it's way better than like your off the shelf platform as far as you needing it to talk with this code or this plug in and all the stuff that it can do. But it's manageable. But I feel like these corporate,

you know, because we've worked with some corporate clients, they bring us in, they're using this platform like, why in God's earth are we, what are we on and why? And it's like, everything is like pulling teeth. Is it, is it? Is that like just to protect the agency or why the hell's it got to be so hard, Nick? You know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to name any names, but you know, it's just like, oh yeah, we're on a corporate CMS. It's insert name here. And it's like you get behind the hood and it's like Jesus like Yeah, yeah Jesus like it's words like digital transformation and all these things were architected in a ways to create massive budgets to extract a bunch from an organization that was looking for a Solution to a problem that they really didn't understand like, you know what the root causes were in the first place

a problem that they really didn't understand what the root causes were in the first place. And so I definitely lament it. I think like as, you know, going back and being the product of someone who came up in the earliest days of the web, there's actually like a beautiful simplicity behind how the web actually works. That when you fast forward to today

and look at all the layers that now have been created in the stack, I just like completely sympathize and empathize with marketers and others that have to think about what is the martech stack, what is the web stack that I bring together. My developers are telling me we need to do this thing and use these technologies. My executives are telling me these analysts are recommending this highly complex and enterprise level solution. And usually when we say enterprise level it's

like they're overly complex, heavy handed, massive suites of things that you don't end up using and that's the status quo. And from my perspective it's like that beautiful simplicity you're like preaching to the choir here from a WordPress perspective is like how can we, that's how we show up differently. It's just, we'll come into an organization of a couple hundred thousand people and they'll say, our existing technology, six people know how to update our digital properties. Out of 200,000, we got six people internally

that can touch this thing. And our goal is then like, how do we open that up? Like, how do we turn six into hundreds or thousands? Because the reality for marketers and organizations is if you're trying to connect with your customers and you're trying to catch attention, you have to be doing this in a way where you're able to move quickly

and you're able to engage authentically and directly. And usually, the best way to do that is not through like six gatekeepers in the organization. And so that's where you think actually, like WordPress and WordPress VIP brings the superpower into these big companies, because it's like get the rest of the stuff out of the way. You don't need the complexity for complexity's sake.

And so that gives me plenty of stuff to work on for the next, I don't know, decades, cause I feel like it's ingrained in these large companies that we need complex platforms and actually like the simplest solutions are the best solutions. So, yeah. And in today's world, like, it's, it's like, I just need to throw a landing page up, you know, like, can we, like, can we get the communication out there? You know, like how fast does this have to be? And you know, you've seen technologies like Canva

and other things that have tried to, you know, democratize, you know, content development and landing page. And that's what I always liked about WordPress is that you could do things quickly using and having and the openness, you know, having the open source side and then all the plugins. So we're, you know, it's a wonderful thing when you guys, the way you guys are willing to work with so many other partners, because so many other things need to talk to things. And that's what the great thing,

like when a client comes to me and they do have maybe some complexity or whatever, that's why I'm always, you know, WordPress is top of mind, because I'm like, okay, it's the fastest to integrate. It has a plugin for that, a plugin for this. And some people get like their hair like in a mess over all that, but like,

that's what I've always liked about WordPress is the willingness to sort of partner with anyone to bring these integrations to life and seemingly do it in an open way. Yeah. And then you get to focus on actually solving new challenges. Like the most frustrating thing to me is like when you've like come up with 10 different ways to integrate with whatever CRM you're using. And then like in reality, like you're like thousands of other organizations

that have also needed to integrate with that CRM or that digital asset management platform or an ad platform or analytics or any number of things. And so why spend the time recreating these elements and then actually spend the time on like what actually, what are your business challenges? What are your business opportunities? How do you focus on those?

Because authentication systems and CRMs are not value generating activities. CMS, creating your own CMS is not creating more value for your organization. So how do you let this ecosystem and our organization help with solved problems? So you really just focus on business strategy and execution and your customers or your audiences, new problems that's way more engaging anyway. And doing that. So, yeah, that's the whole Nick Gernert. He is the CEO of WordPress VIP. Nick, you know.

The elephant in the room, whenever you're talking about content, AI, artificial intelligence, what's been the general, you know, WordPress slash WordPress VIP slash automatic sort of corporate position on AI in general, and even your own sort of position on how it's been coming to unfold the last couple years. Yeah. Look, I mean, I think our position is, there's a lot that's exciting in this. And being perfectly honest,

I'm also the person that wants to be really pragmatic on what are new approaches, new technologies, et cetera, bringing to the work we need to do and how do we actually stay focused on the value of that and not just necessarily chasing trends. Because a lot of the complexity we were just talking about comes from the temptation to maybe chase trends and throw things in there and hope they actually make things better. But I think with AI, this is something that, and particularly generative AI, this idea that machines can generate text and

images and video, etc. in ways that we've just not been able to do historically is exciting, especially when you think about, you know, our role as a content management system. So we're the source of record and creation for a lot of these things. So our position is like, what is the best of those two things coming together? Because like anything, you want to focus, you want to focus your people time on the most valuable activities and let the machines do like what they're well suited to do. This has been like the I mean, this is the history of technology in general,

is that we see a big technology shift and then we wonder if the status quo is forever changed. And really we can look at like how it adapts into the future because like, you know, the role of a CMS has been called into question many times over the years in terms of different waves of technology evolution. And we're still here and we're still very critical as part of this. So I think from our perspective,

it's like how do we make humans more, how do we give them superpowers in this moment here in doing this? We don't see it, I don't see it, and I don't see it anytime near where there's a strategy where it's just like, look, we just let the machines now run our content strategies, our content creation, and everything in that. Our approach and our view is very much like there's a human in the loop. This is human directed. And then it's aided through a lot of these technologies here that actually help take care of a lot of things

that historically have been time consuming or just not even done well. So you can think of like overly simplified things like image descriptions for accessibility, alt tags, things like this that we've had to do in technology. Like nobody likes to do that. And then we have like certain parts of our audience suffering when it's not well taken care of. Like those kinds of things are absolutely accelerated.

Um, the categorization and taxonomy around our content, way easier and way more streamlined with the help of things like what we're seeing in AI right now. Translations and the acceleration of things like translations. This is, again, these are things that there's solutions for. We don't even have to build them all

as like automatic or WordPress VIP. There's great organizations out there building these kinds of solutions today and like anything with WordPress it's like oh it just easily snaps into what I'm already doing. So we actually view ourselves as kind of a platform by which a lot of folks will just experience AI and maybe not even fully realize they're experiencing AI. It's just like, wow, the tool just works really well on these tasks that I need to do around it. Some things we're doing uniquely, like we as WordPress VIP, we sit on,

we have a lot of analytics data that we have access to by virtue of some products that we provide. And so we're looking at how do we help our own customers take their analytics, their content performance, what has worked, etc. And how do we actually feed that into, you know, the content that is generated through AI. So if you're looking at like, I want headlines or titles that perform better, we can actually help say based on historical performance, we'll write headlines in your tone of voice

or your business tone, you know, based on your performance and we will recommend things. And so we're looking at this as a way to say, we can start to get predictive on how to help customers understand what has worked historically and apply that to the future. And so we're looking at that as saying, how do we take our unique assets we have as an organization,

which is a lot of data that otherwise you don't necessarily have access to? And how do we apply that to things that get generated? So I think the other side of this is we actually went out to the market earlier this year and just said, hey, how are you applying AI in your workflow? And the response was about half of folks, and this is just a couple of months ago,

about half of folks responded, we've experimented with AI in some way. And then about 10% are saying, I'm using it consistently. So we're still in this moment from an AI adoption standpoint where folks are, it's still very Mason on the consistent adoption and application of it. And so I think, again, part of how we're thinking about this is how do we just incorporate this into our product

that supercharges an editor's experience, a content creator's experience in a way where they might not even really realize they're working with AI necessarily. It's just helping them do their jobs that much more effectively. That's definitely going to be our focus for years to come here, rather than thinking that suddenly this shift makes the CMS irrelevant or the content creator irrelevant or anything else.

It's just going to make us more effective like any other technology shift we've seen in recent decades. Yeah, it's interesting as you're talking, thinking like the evolution that you've witnessed being there 11 years with like mobile and the smartphone. And because I was thinking, OK, WordPress is this. thinking, okay, WordPress is this envelope or the carrier of content. And it carries the content. And when that was a desktop experience, that was one thing. And it's still, you still have these experiences of laptops and we're working on desktop experiences wherever that even if it's mobile. But then you've got the mobile phone

and education versus entertainment and the role of WordPress as the carrier of that. Like a lot of back there, my brain just started to go down this rabbit hole, Nick, like going, Nick's seen a lot through the evolution, you know, of how the web gets used and the device that it's on. Right? Yeah. Yes. And like, so your mobile example is a great one. Because, you know, in the earliest days

of mobile, like we carved off specific teams that focused on the mobile experience for like, look, you're the mobile team, you are the caretaker of this new paradigm, this and, and it wasn't big unlock for an organization to think about like, okay, now I can reach an audience in a whole new place, in a whole new way, et cetera. So you focused on that. And now we don't have a mobile team anymore.

Like mobile is just part of what we think about as part of like, well, we know half the audience is at least gonna be coming from a mobile device. So we need to make sure it works great in that context, in that use case. AI is gonna be a similar thing here. It's like, wait, you know what? We do have AI teams carved off right now.

We're saying, like, hey, go focus on this sort of new thing. But give it a few years. This will just settle into an understanding of, like, all right, here's where the value's really accruing and generated in this. And it's just part of the work we do. It's not an and or like another lane. It's just another part of this paradigm. So to your point, like these fundamentals,

this evolution, the more you just have like the very broad foundations that WordPress is built on, it helps you adapt and say like, okay, something new is here. We're gonna focus on that for now. And then it just becomes part of the common platform over time, and then we'll be ready for the next thing and adapt to that ideally.

Yeah. You guys are the FedEx of, you know, the delivery system in a way. You gotta explain that. You know? But no matter what it is, I mean, I don't know, like it comes through, you know, I get this package analogy.

That's why my brain works. It's like the world on time. Yeah. The content delivered when you want it, where you want it without you having to think about necessary, like the best thing that FedEx can do is make you not know they exist because it's so ubiquitous. So there's no issues, right? We only worry, only around there's issues

when the package doesn't get there. So if I never talk or think about FedEx, that means FedEx is doing their job. Same thing almost with WordPress, because no matter what you're trying to get at the content, whether it's entertainment, education, whether it's the brochure or the TV show that's encapsulated, video encapsulated on the site. No one needs to know you exist, the least other than the corporate person that you work

with, but the user experience. So that's a fascinating kind of analogy, right? Totally agree with everything you're saying there. And our job is well done when we kind of just fade into, you know, the back and we, and as long as we're enabling folks to do their jobs, and as long as people can get what they need when they need it, everything like that's the job well done. And it's not about us like having a visible spot somewhere

in that stack. So that's why you said AI built in not you might not even know it. Because you don't need to know it. You guys are leveraging the technology bringing a better experience to life without actually, again, it's like we don't have to package these things to call it AI. We just call it a company using technology in a good way to make your experience better. Sometimes we market things, and I'm a marketing guy. I love putting monikers on things. Well, I know that's the audience we're talking to right now. And I mean, that's part of our own challenge, honestly, is like, look, folks want to know about AI right now. And so I want to know

what your product is doing. I don't think it's as much about AI. It's like, folks want to know, like, what are you doing to keep up with the pace of change? Yeah. And like please talk to me about how you're shifting with change. And so AI is that lens we view it through right now, but it's like how adaptable are you really? And so you're right. And it's like you need to talk about it. We need to talk about it through the lens by which people are viewing things. And also I don't want to overstate that somehow this is an entirely new product. This becomes something that actually takes something you've already been doing and improves upon it

in ways that are like really exciting and haven't been transformed this way in many years. So just an exciting shift in the work. How do you think, because when I go, I start thinking websites and WordPress and my mind gets pretty fast, probably being a digital agency guy, like SEO. And I think not only like, okay, within WordPress optimization of SEO that could be done with, you know, machine learning and AI and all that sort of thing. But also the user experience for how

people are searching today. It's kind of like twofold. And how do you guys think about SEO within the landscape of the product and just overall with everything happening with AI? Yeah. So, I mean, the foundation is WordPress has had SEO sort of its core since its earliest days that in most cases we'll see folks migrate into the platform and immediately see a dramatic SEO improvement just because of all the care and attention that's gone into how documents get structured and delivered it It's just a very SEO friendly way. The most exciting thing we're working on as a business right now that's AI related is

related to back linking. So one of the things that drives authority from an SEO, and you know this, is what points to what and what authority, how can you take high authority things and point them to something so that it also then gets more authority. So one of the things we've actually been working on from an SEO standpoint is how do we take, so you can do like we do Google Search Console integrations into our products so our customers can start to feed Google Search Console data into our platform.

So immediately, we start to already know a lot of the insights around SEO. And what we're then doing, at the time of something being published, so you go out, you're going to publish our interview here today. And you're like, what're going to publish our interview here today. And you're like, I've got, what I want to do is I want to get this thing ranking well for AI and content or something like this. And I know I posted some things years ago about CMS or whatever.

And what we'll quickly do is go into your archives, we'll match up your highest authority, existing content, and say you need to insert links to this new thing in this content and we'll walk you through a workflow by which you can go about and do that. And then at the global enterprise scale, we're actually then saying, hey, we'll actually go do that across a network of sites. So you might have one.com here, but actually you probably run a hundred websites with us. So we'll actually go through your entire catalog and say, how could you relate across your

entire catalog of content to these new things? And so, and that is that this the accuracy and the efficacy of this has been unlocked in a new way, thanks to AI, and just how quickly you can do this and how accurately you can do this. That, for me, it's probably the most exciting thing. Like yes, we're also doing things that's like generate me an SEO-friendlier headline and things like this from a document

construction standpoint, that's great. This just like supercharges it in a new way that at least I'm not seeing anyone else right now is able to really do this kind of thing. So that's definitely one of the things that has me most excited about. Like, as you got around that, the moment you said it, like, yeah, like that, that's definitely one of the things that has me most excited about. Like, SPGarage. Yeah, I'm about to wrap my head around that the moment you said it.

Like, I mean, like, yeah, like that, that's big. And that is, I have not heard of anyone else connecting those dots. And it does, I mean, back linking for SEO value, for anyone listening, like, there's an SEO specialist, like, your SEO, where you fall in those search rankings are driven by a lot of things, but two really, a lot of things, but two really

the most important things, the content and the relevance of that content and the keywords that are used that are highly searched when people are looking for that. And then the sometimes lesser known is the back linking from authoritative sites that have high domain authority that are linking back to your content and your website raises your SEO value. And what Nick is saying is they're making that a lot fucking easier with AI.

So practical use. Practical use, yeah. And hopefully an improved user experience too. So if I land on one of your old piece of content, I'm. Practical use, yeah. And hopefully an improved user experience too. So if I land on one of your old piece of content, I'm like, oh great, actually there's an updated thing on this as well. So, not all, it's SEO and ideally an improved user experience as well

on the way. So, thank you for validating us on the, like, that you think is also potentially valuable. That is very valuable for the right people. And if it isn't valuable to them, it means they don't know or understand how valuable it is. And I don't mean to, and I'm not being harsh.

I'm just direct. People. People. You're just talking. Yeah. This is an opinion show on some level. So you're going to get mine. There you go.

If you don't know that's valuable, call me. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Nick and I will hook you up. Nick Garner, he's the CEO of WordPress VIP. Who doesn't want to be a VIP? Very important person. I like being a VIP. Nick, staying down that search train just a little bit with AI, it's interesting, you know, with ChatGPT and, you know, asking things. Are you guys seeing or you have data that supports? I mean, you guys have so much data.

I can't even imagine how much data like information you guys have. It makes my head want to explode. But that's why the computers get to do it for us. But user, how much use? And it goes almost like the people Googling or chat GPTing. Do you guys seeing those kind of trends and that data and reacting in any way to it? Yeah, so I mean, there's a few things here.

I mean, like I think on one end, what's informing these models tends to be a lot of the content that's been created and exists across the web. And so I think there's, we've been helping folks navigate attention of like what's fair use of my content. That's, you know, so,

and we're trying to help at a platform level. Like, look, if you want to restrict certain things or whatever, we want to help you there and make sure you've got those types of things. And I think the website and web in general will have a significant role to play for the foreseeable future in what informs the responses and what is considered fact and opinion, et cetera, comes from these sources.

So yes, there's a certain amount of training models against those things, but I don't and etc. comes from these sources. So yes, there's a certain amount of training models against those things, but I don't see it usurping the importance of the sources anytime soon. So, but we're helping folks navigate like their use of their content. And then your point on what are we seeing from a trend standpoint in terms of consumption,

like is, you know, we were asking ourselves over the summer that was the introduction of AI summaries on Google, was that leading to a decline in Google referral traffic to our customer websites? With people searching, they got the answer in that synopsis, and then they never actually clicked the blue link anymore. I think that's the big fear that folks are worried about at the moment, that's the most kind of pressing concern is where does that?

We dug into a bunch of data around this and overall right now we're actually seeing referral traffic from Google to the websites that we look at, which we're looking across a couple hundred million visitors every day. So it's a significant amount of traffic. Google referral traffic is actually increasing right now, so in aggregate. And then if you kind of peel that back, there's disparity, though, between the size of the organization.

What we're seeing is the bigger you are as an organization, kind of to your point, the better you are at navigating SEO, relevancy, et cetera. So you might have teams you can dedicate to this more than the smaller players. And so we are seeing a bit of a, it's not as evenly distributed from big to smaller in that spread.

So that gives us more of an impetus to say, how do we help folks navigate this, despite whether or not they have massive teams that can stay on top of these things or not. So what we're seeing is like, look, if you're able to engage and build great content, backlink it, relate it, do all the things that help you, you're maintaining at least, or even a growing audience right now. And so we're going to continue to monitor this and watch this and just help folks navigate what may or may not change in this. I think there's a healthy, there's a well-earned healthy amount of skepticism towards Google at the moment.

And how much should I rely on them for traffic? And as a platform that directs people to me, I think that's fair. They are a very important source of traffic though. And I think it's both like leveraging that and also thinking about like, how do you have a strategy that doesn't make you overly dependent on any one particular technology because I mean you know this better

than I but it's like the over dependency on anyone's social platform or search or chat GPT or anything else might help you in a you know six to 12 month time horizon and may really hurt you on a multi-year trajectory if you're trying to think long-term. So same rules still apply. How do you have like a well, how do you hedge against over-dependence on any one particular company to drive your business? We're trying to help folks navigate that. Because we think we as WordPress

and something that is open, we're not a platform that owns your data or you or anything else. You actually own all of these things. We're here to help you kind of navigate that and have a stronger owned presence on the web. Yeah, that's the, you nailed the word there at the end, but I was going to go as like rented versus owned land. And I've always seen WordPress, because I'll say this to people, whether it's social media or other entities, YouTube even.

And look, take advantage of the platforms. I'm not a hater on the walled gardens, but just know that's rented land and not owned land and WordPress may sell products and services, but they are part of the good guy owned land territory. And I've always coached that your website needs to be your own property, your newsletter, your website, your content. You've got to own it and have places that it lives in sort of your yard and not your neighbors.

Or the one, the beach house you're renting down the street. That could go away at any time. One good storm away from God. So yeah. Nick, as we close out here, you know, what are you seeing? We've talked about, you know, the trends with AI, pragmatically improving, you know, experiences on the web, things that WordPress are doing. Maybe for our listeners, what are maybe some practical things that you're seeing in corporate business, website,

like go-to-market strategies these days, or just what are some trends or things that are real that are using your pragmatic approach that you think people should be thinking about as they maybe embark on a new site or a new project within a web experience, those kinds of things? Anything top of mind, some actionable things? Yeah. I think we're in a moment here where it's a great opportunity to reassess

Just what are you investing in those in your own channels? Right now and so I think actually one of the challenges is our folks even embarking on this journey that you're describing Which is am I looking at these on channels? Am I investing in them whether that is in microites for a particular audience or like our broader digital presence? Because I think, you know, there's never been a better time to really think about your investments in your own space of web and digital.

And you're naming all these things from newsletter because you, no one can own how you distribute into somebody's inbox to web and website. There's a reason these things have had a resurgence in recent years because we've seen really the dynamics of platforms and who controls what in terms of an audience really get called into question. And as a large organization,

it's highly dependent on these connections to your customers or in your audiences. It's chilling to think that that can easily be cut off. And so the trend and the thing that we're seeing folks like is just how do I invest more in this? Because one of the trends that we see and that we've heard from people is like, more than half of folks wants to get their information

from a source that's not a social platform. But yet interestingly those same folks are saying like, yeah, more than half the time I'm just going to social and getting this information. And I think a lot of that is due to the fact that the experiences on the own side have been neglected and are not nearly as robust or as engaging as some of these other platforms and things like this. And that's not to say that everyone needs to recreate the platforms, but you need to be investing in experiences for your own customers that actually are generating positive customer experiences.

And you can do this in your own channels. And you can do this there. But folks, so that is for me the thing that I would just encourage everyone to be revisiting right now is how much are you investing in that because there's long-term returns on that. And some of our most successful customers on the enterprise side are the ones that five years ago,

even pre-pandemic, were like, we're making a big investment in the channels we own and the content we drive to those channels. We're going to own more of a relationship with our customers and those were the folks that navigated like the you know a shutdown to entire digital and you know in early 2020 and then emerging from that now have navigated from that the best and the strongest. So it's like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, best times today or second best time is today. It's same sort of thing. I think like the, the, the time to invest in your own strategy would have been

five years ago, but you know, start today would be my start a new campaign. There's no political affiliation here at all, but you'll get where I'm going here. Nick, let's make websites great again. You know, like I'm just saying like, I know that conjures up like a feeling no matter where you fall politically. I'm serious though, Nick. Like there, it's sort of like,

it's as you were talking, I'm sitting here going, when's the last time I went into a website and really was surprised and delighted? It's been a while. And it's time to like surprise and delight again on the web. Yeah, the web is a wonderful and beautiful, weird place where you can do these really creative and invent things that no one necessarily gets to control those bounds.

And I think we've lost some of that in more of a homogenized experience. The cookie cutter, you know, you're within those walled gardens and you've got your profile and people are learning about you but you can't bring your brand completely to life. Yeah, and maybe we'll start a site, maybe we just start a site and it's like highlighting really great things that folks are doing with the web right now because there are some really great examples of great experiences that folks are investing in and building. So maybe you've given me an idea of like we just need some inspiration.

We need some inspiration, Nick. That's what it is. Let's inspire. That's what this is about. Inspire web greatness on your own branded properties with Nick Gurnard and WordPress VIP. Nick, it's been a pleasure, brother. Where can everybody keep up with everything you're doing, learn more about WordPress VIP, etc.? Yeah, you can find us WPVIP.com. You can find me on just about any channel. My name, Nick Garner. You'll find me anywhere there or WordPress VIP all over the typical networks you look at as well. So find us all there. And I really appreciate the time. This has been a ton of fun. You're, I don't, you know, we're very aligned on many of the things that, you know, could be great here. So I appreciate it. Yeah. I think there should be some partnership or something on this.

Love to have you back on the show regularly. Nick. Hey guys, you know, to find us, Ryanisright.com. We're bringing together all the best all in business and marketing here on the show. Nick and everything to do and over at WordPrice. Look, don't be on rented land. You gotta get that own land where it needs to be. You can check out WordPress VIP. We'll have the show notes

where we link to all the content from today. Nick's information and WordPress VIP. You can follow me on that. All the social channels that Ryan offered. You'll follow me on all the social channels that Ryan Alford, you'll see that blue check before you can buy it. We'll see you next time on Right About Now. This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford,

a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show, or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening!